Beating the Bounds of the Parish in Early Modern England
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CHAPTER 11 Beating the Bounds of the Parish: Order, Memory, and Identity in the English Local Community, c. 1500–1700* Steve Hindle In 1581, the vicar of the Oxfordshire parish of Beckley gave evidence in a church court case over the collection of tithes. John Foxleye remembered that “abowte xxiiij yeares agoe” [i.e. c. 1557], the parishioners of Stanton St John in theire perambulacions … when they came to a certen meares ende … wich … was sayed to be betwene the parishes of Stanton and Woodperie dyd then putt downe theire crosse, folde uppe theire banners, [and] shutte up theire bookes withowte singing or readinge in token that they weare then in Woodperie, [the] parishioners [there] … commanding [them] so to doe for that they weare oute of theire [own] parishe.1 Foxleye was describing a Rogationtide procession, a ceremony popularly known by the later sixteenth century as the “beating of the bounds,” in which the territorial boundaries of the parish were sanctified by a ritual perambulation combining the idioms of custom and religion to make a powerful statement of communal identity and spiritual unity. Foxleye’s account is especially interesting both for its vivid references to the performance of the ritual—crosses lowered and lifted; banners folded and unfurled; books closed and opened; voices hushed and raised; * I would©Ashgate like to acknowledge the financial support of the 2008Humanities Research Centre of the University of Warwick for making it possible for me to attend the panels on “Defining Community in Early Modern Europe” at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota (October 007) at which a version of this paper was given; to thank John Craig, Heather Falvey, Naomi Tadmor, and Keith Wrightson for their constructive criticisms of an early draft; and to express my appreciation to Michael Halvorson and Karen Spierling for their editorial efforts and comments. 1 Oxford Church Courts: Depositions, 1581–1586, ed. Jack Howard-Drake (Oxford, 1994), pp. 8–9. Oxford English Dictionary [OED] s.v. “beat” (v.1 41) cites Barnaby Googe (1570) as the earliest reference to the idiom of “bounds” being “beaten” during “procession week.” 06 DeFININg COMMUNITy IN eaRly MODeRN eUROpe gospels silenced and spoken—and for its implication that the participants recognized the spatial limits of their collectivity. although Rogationtide processions were merely “one part of a complex mnemonic system” that perpetuated local customs, perambulations like that at Stanton St John were the principal means by which the local community, in both the geographical and the sociological senses of that problematic term, was defined in early modern england. as a symbolic affirmation of the community of the parish, they had a “truly Durkheimian significance,” representing one of those fleeting moments when society might be observed in the act of describing itself. It was customary to perambulate the parish bounds at Rogationtide, the penitential phase of the easter cycle that included the fifth Sunday after easter and the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before ascension Day.4 These perambulations, known as “gang days” or “cross days,” had been performed since before the Norman Conquest, and were by the late medieval period firmly entrenched in the culture of corporate Christianity.5 Their purpose was to expel from the community those evil spirits thought to be responsible for both contention and sickness; and to propitiate good weather. Those who processed behind the parish cross held aloft by the priest carried hand-bells and banners; chanted passages from the psalms and gospels; stopped at wayside crosses to say prayers for the crops; and sang the litany of the saints. Even in the late medieval period, however, this was not merely a ritual of incorporation, uniting the living and the dead through the authority of intercessory prayer. It also implied exclusion, for the demons which infested earth and air were banished by the objective power of holy words and gestures. Rogationtide perambulation was, furthermore, a ritual of demarcation in which the identity of the parish was defined over against its neighbors and the solidarity of the parishioners was symbolized. There was, accordingly, a strong element of charity and Nicola Whyte, “landscape, Memory and Custom: parish identities, c.1550–1700,” Social History, / (007): 186; Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1979), p. 109. Cf. phil Withington and alexandra Shepard,©Ashgate “Introduction: Communities in early Modern e ngland,”2008 in alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (eds), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester, 000), pp. 1–15. For Durkheim, see John Bossy, “Some Elementary Forms of Durkheim,” Past and Present, 95 (198): –18; and Patrick Collinson, “Religion, Society and the Historian,” Journal of Religious History, / (1999): 149–67. 4 Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, 1996), pp. 77–87. For the European context, see Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 66–7. 5 Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 4–6, 5; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 136–9. BeaTINg THe BOUNDS OF THe paRISH 07 commensality, with food and drink being provided for all those who perambulated. One of the principal symbolic themes of perambulation, moreover, was the restoration of communal harmony and Rogationtide was therefore a traditional time for the settlement of parish disputes. Rogationtide perambulations, like many other forms of procession, fell foul of the protestant reformers. as early as 1531, William Tyndale condemned the “saying of the gospels to the corn in the field in the procession week, that it should the better grow;” and in 1540, Richard Taverner fulminated against “the rage and furour of those uplandyshe processions and gangynges about” spent “in ryottynge and in bely chere,” during which “the banners and badges of the crosse” were “unreverently handled and abused;” and complained that parishioners took part “rather to set out and shew themselves and to passe the tyme wyth vayne & vnprofytable tales and mery fables than to make generall supplication to god.” By 1564, John goose of West Tilbury (essex) could point to a boundary stone and rhetorically ask those who beat it whether there was “an idol here to be worshipped that you have a drinking here?” In 1571, the Dorset minister William Kethe criticized the traditional belief that any sins committed between Easter and Whitsuntide could be “fullye discharged by the pleasaunt walkes and processions in the rogyng, I should say, Rogation Weeke.” By 164, the separatist John Canne was arguing that “the observation of Gang days” was “wholly popish, invented by Hillarius the great antichrist, in the year 444.”6 To the reformers then, Rogationtide “cross days” were both archaic and superstitious. It is accordingly surprising that the Edwardian reforms of 1547 did not explicitly outlaw perambulations, especially since they might easily be associated with those other processions condemned because they had ostensibly caused “contention and strife” among the people “by reason of fond courtesy and challenging of places;” and prevented the “edifying” of parishioners who could not hear what was said or sung.7 On the contrary, the long-term survival of the ceremony was assured by the inclusion of a Rogationtide sermon in the Elizabethan book of homilies ©Ashgateof 156, though it had been conspicuous 2008 by its absence from 6 William Tyndale, Answer to Thomas More’s Dialogue (Cambridge, 1850), pp. 61–; [Richard Taverner,] Epistles and Gospelles with a Brief Postil … from Easter tyll Advent (london, 1540), fol. xxxii; F.g. emmison, “Tithes, perambulations and Sabbath-Breach in Elizabethan Essex,” in Frederick Emmison and Roy Stephens (eds), Tribute to an Antiquary: Essays Presented to Marc Fitch By Some of His Friends (London, 1976), p. 186; William Kethe, A Sermon Made at Blanford Foru[m] (London, 1571), p. 19; John Canne, A Necessitie of Separation from the Church of England (London, 164), p. 111. 7 Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, eds W.H. Frere and W.M. Kennedy (3 vols, london, 1908–10), 2:116, 3:14. 08 DeFININg COMMUNITy IN eaRly MODeRN eUROpe the Edwardian volume of 1547.8 The elizabethan Injunctions “for the suppression of superstition and the planting of true religion,” issued in 1559, offered a rationale for its continuation. The eighteenth Injunction stipulated that Rogationtide perambulation was to be retained in order that parishioners might give thanks to God and preserve knowledge of their boundaries.9 The bounds were only to be walked, however, by the curate and by “the substantialest men of the parish” who, without the use of banners or bells, were to stop at “certain convenient places;” to “admonish the people” to thank God “for the increase and abundance of His fruits upon the face of the earth;” to implore divine mercy; and to ask for a blessing on the fields. By 1560, edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, was declaring that his fellow reformers had radically transformed the Rogationtide ritual so that it was no longer “a procession, but a perambulation,” a distinction which implied a far greater difference than might at first be appreciated.10 It was once thought that although it was the only procession to survive the Reformation, Rogationtide perambulation experienced a long, slow period of decline from the mid-sixteenth century onward. Stripped of its sacred associations, it was argued, the ritual was overwhelmed by processes of agrarian change, and especially by the obstruction of the traditional route around the boundaries which was often caused by the enclosure of open fields and common wastes.11 More detailed research, especially in the accounts of the churchwardens who often funded perambulations, has, however, revealed a more complex pattern, in which continuity is the dominant motif.